Resonance
by Ellie 5192
Summary: Written for Penguin's Challenge no.18 "We flirt with bad boys but marry good ones. Because they stay". One-shot. S/J with Sam/Pete.


_Written for Penguin's Challenge no.18 _

"_We flirt with the bad boys but marry the good ones. Because they stay"- Jean Gray, X-Men_

_A different take on this quote, but this came to me on the train, so I hope you enjoy. _

_AU, starting from the end of season 8. I've tried to work in canon where I can, and I hope it fits, but bear in mind it will be different. Let me know if any mistakes are unforgivable, and I'll do my best to right my wrongs. Drop us a line, let me know what you think. All comments are appreciated._

_Enjoy!_

In the end she marries Pete. The wedding is beautiful, the bride positively glowing, and the groom still a little dazed that they got this far.

And Jack sits quietly between Daniel and Teal'c, smiling when she looks at him and being genuinely happy for her. He lets go of the disappointment early in the game, because they are still friends, and she's earned the right to choose to be happy.

He even makes an effort to truly congratulate Pete, and is only half joking when he tells him to take good care of her. Pete, despite being a little too chipper and a tad naive, is not a complete imbecile, and takes his vows seriously, saying as much in response. Jack knows he'll try his best, and desperately hopes it's enough.

The happy couple are barely back from the honeymoon when Carter is offered a leading position at R&D in Nevada, closer to Cassie, who hasn't been herself since Janet died. Carter spends a week in talks with general after general, researcher after physicist.

But it's Jack who adds up his accrued personal time, packs his stuff, and spends the better part of three months commiserating with Cassie over their mutual loss. They try not to get too morose, but it's clear that things have just taken a drastic turn, and they aren't quite sure they want to embrace it, though they can't stay made at Carter for long. After all, she's just getting settled into her shiny yellow kitchen and her posting at the SGC labs, and they remind each other daily that she's allowed to live her life any way she sees fit, trying not to be bitter about it.

When Jack gets the call from Washington, Cassie assures him she's back on track and drives him to the airport, promising to stay in touch and hinting that Georgetown may have a position for her later in her degree.

Two weeks after he moves into his new brownstone, Carter calls him- tired, worn, fresh out of a spacesuit and thankful for Cam's flying skills. Pete's pulling a double and she just needs to talk to someone who _gets it_. A few short months off and she's forgotten what it feels like to almost die on a daily basis. He listens to her vent about projects and the Ori and the damn landscaper who ordered the wrong pavers, and he's thankful they've at least managed to salvage this friendship.

He hasn't lost everything.

She ends up calling him every time a mission goes balls up, finding it easier to say things on a telephone, with over a thousand miles between them. The calls are often, because they're SG-1, and getting in trouble is what they do, and even though she's only on the odd off-world mission in between projects, they become a regular thing. Not at first, but over time, and soon she's calling him every month. Once a fortnight. Every week. Before long they settle on Tuesday night as their weekly catch-up, and she never misses it, even when dozens of doppelgangers invade the SGC. He enjoys Tuesday evenings, and finds himself looking forward to it, not just for the person he shares it with, but because he feels like he's part of the loop again, hearing her voice recount the tales of the week.

It takes him months to realise that Tuesday works best because it's the night Pete pulls his double shift, and instead of feeling like he's conducting a secret affair (which he'll admit he expected) it feels more like a secret club. Conspiratorial and sneaky, but not illicit.

But he still makes a point not to tell anyone.

They don't ever really talk about her marriage, and he's thankful for that, because talking about other people's relationships always makes him feel a little voyeuristic, and they've come too far to let old feeling resurface.

When he finally takes her advice and calls into town, ostensibly for Mitchell's 200th, he crashes on Daniel's couch rather than take up her offer of the spare room. He knows _that_ whole idea was a bad one, because he's not an idiot, and he knows she did too. She doesn't bring it up again the night they're sitting at Daniel's, with one too many beers and Marty's show on in the background just for kicks. He doesn't miss the flicker of annoyance on her face when Daniel mentions how late it is, and won't Pete be missing her?

Her husband wasn't invited, or else just didn't come, and that tells him more about the dynamics between him and the group than any secret late-night phone calls ever could. A part of him wants to feel sorry for the guy- it's not like they're an easy bunch to get to know. But another part of him figures he should have known what he was getting into, and he's Carter's problem. She's a big girl who can make up her own mind, so he keeps telling himself.

The morning of his departure he calls in for brunch at her house, just to see the place she now calls home. The backyard looks a little worn with its beautiful landscaping left to grow wild, and the deck seats don't look used, and the yellow kitchen looks far too bright. He'd have gone for a softer, creamier yellow, not the vivid lemon that graces the walls.

He tries not to study the happy couple as they dance around each other. Pete's attempting to put the laundry door back on its hinges while Carter makes a pot of coffee and pulls out fresh brownie from the oven. He wipes his hands on a tea towel after washing them in the kitchen sink, and she dons an oven mitt to hold the tray steady while she cuts the biggest pieces of brownie she can, grinning at Jack all the while. Pete pours himself a cup of coffee from the pot, asking Jack the obligatory questions, making excuses for leaving the room to let the two friends talk. He pecks Carter's cheek on his way past, and the way she holds her face out to him, expecting the action, makes Jack sick to his stomach.

The whole picture makes him sick. Like someone took everything he knew about Carter and shook it through a 1950's catalogue.

He tries to focus on how happy she seems, and how nice their three bedroom house is, despite it being three times too big for the two of them. He tries to focus on the amazing brownie she's baked him, and the shine of the stainless steel appliances.

He tries not to notice the unused doggy-door and kennel. They never got around to going to the pound, just like they haven't got pregnant and they haven't re-done the bathrooms or turned the shed into a boy's retreat. He hates that he's not surprised by these absences, though he's not so selfish as to be happy about them.

He tries not to notice that she looks just like she did after the incident on the Prometheus. Content. Satisfied. Perhaps even happy. But not glowing. She's not yet two years into this marriage and she already looks as though she's settling in for the long haul.

She dismisses his casual questions, and he lets it go.

It's her choice. That's what he's always said.

It's her life, and he can't make her decisions for her.

She turns down Atlantis, and he thinks he knows why. A year away from the picturesque life is not exactly what her marriage is all about. He talks to her about it, but her simple dismissal of the idea tells him what his suspicions already had- she's lost her will to fight tooth and nail for her career, and while part of him is happy she finally got a life, another part wonders about the cost.

She insists she's fine with staying in the labs at the SGC, and he doesn't push.

Still, it doesn't surprise him when he sees her acceptance letter for command of The Hammond cross his desk. It's been almost three and a half years, and Sam Carter can only handle cabin fever in her own house for so long. He guesses a shorter deployment was the selling point, but when he speaks to her he can tell things have been tense between her and Pete, given the lack of any mention of her home life.

It's in the things she doesn't say- a lesson he learned years ago.

Her tours in space last four months each, which is relatively short, and only possible because this is space travel their talking about, not your average deployment in the Middle East. He misses their talks more than he has a right to, expecting the ring of the phone every Tuesday. When he does speak to her, two days after she's back Earth-side, she sounds drained, though she perks up when she talks about the Hammond. She barely even registers his polite enquiries about her husband, and he tries not to calculate how many more tours it'll take to collapse their house of cards. A voice in his head says two, but he doesn't breathe a word of that to anyone, not even Daniel.

They last longer than he expects, and he has to give them credit where credit is due. They're a stubborn pair.

The divorce goes through five years, eight months and a handful of days after the wedding. It's calm, almost cold, though neither of them is so dramatic as to put boxes out on the front lawn.

They never joined their bank accounts, they'll split the house fifty/fifty and the furniture seems to just fall either side of the line in the sand without question. It's clean, quiet and inevitable, and things should have been so very different. They don't fight. They just walk away, apologies silent between them.

Jack is the only one who knows she _did_ cry over it, listening from a thousand miles away as she blubbered into the receiver, curled on her couch at midnight. It's not the man she's crying over, but the shattering of the illusion, the wasted time, and the loss of something real, and stable, and _normal_.

She's on another four-month tour before either of them can think straight, and when he sees her again over video link she's brighter, lighter and brunette.

He's not afraid to admit he likes the darker hair, and tells her as much when she calls him, right on schedule, the following Tuesday. She laughs and says she needed a change- something to really shake things up.

He could get used to change.

She tells him she's coming for a visit to D.C to see him and catch up with Cassie, who is now in D.C just like she said she would be. He changes the sheets on the spare bed and runs a vacuum over the place- though the cleaner comes every second week anyway- and he's just putting the recycling in the bin on the curb when her cab pulls up in front of his brownstone. She gets out, pulling a small overnight suitcase behind her, and hugs him right there in the middle of the quiet Georgetown street. He hugs her back, a muttered apology on his lips, and she just shakes her head and shrugs her shoulders. It was only going to go so many ways, but they both have the decency not to say as much.

They order pizza for dinner, and knock back a few beers, and it almost feels like old times. They talk about Daniel and Vala becoming parents, and about Cassie's position at Georgetown University Hospital, and when the alcohol really kicks in, they talk a little about Pete.

She doesn't cry this time.

She leaves him a week later, well-rested and ready to face the world the way the old Sam Carter would, and it's uplifting to see that she really will be okay.

She takes the position as Head of R&D, now based out of the SGC. With the Goa'uld barely existent, the Ori losing the last of its devout and an entire galaxy of planets out there- explored and new- the focus of the program has finally shifted from military tactics to scientific exploration. When he speaks to her on the phone he can practically see her eyes light up as she explains some wondrous technology they've finally got around to studying.

The reawakening is complete.

He spends that week being nice to everyone, feeling lighter than he has in years.

She's not the only one who needed a wake-up call.

A year after her divorce he retires. The day the President finally lets him go, he shows up on her doorstep, her small, single-fronted, double-brick Victorian open from the front door to the back window, welcoming the fresh spring air.

She opens the door, a greasy rag in hand, and hardly looks surprised to see him. They'd talked about him moving back to the Springs for retirement. He's even been offered a consulting job, training the next generation at the SGC, which he'll probably take, because being idle only entertains him for so long.

They hadn't agreed that he'd stay at hers until he found a place of his own, but the fact she simply ushers him inside, offers him a beer and resumes her messy- and somewhat sexy- repairs under the sink says it all.

The sheets on her spare bed are fresh, the room cleaned out, her desk neat and tidy, and she makes no comment when he soon makes the space his own, as though she'd given him a blank canvas and told him to go wild.

On the fourth night he hijacks her TV to watch hockey rather than house-hunt, and when she walks in with their tea and places them on the side table, she sits down close to him on the couch and leans into him, tucking her arm into the crook of his elbow and lacing their fingers together.

It's a flashback to yesteryear- to campfires and forbidden hugs and near-death experiences, and though it's been close to a decade since they've been in the field together, it feels like nothing's changed.

Nothing ever changed.

But the doubt still lingers, and so he wonders, after all this time, and a broken marriage, and years of just friendship and half a continent between them.

"Why?"

She looks up at him, her eyes more world-weary, and her expression contemplative, as she studies the new lines on his face, the old scar on his eyebrow, his unwavering eyes that still, after all this time, hold a fire for her. Her unclaimed hand comes up to rest again his jaw.

"Because you stayed"

And as strange as that answer may seem, it's the first thing to come out of her mouth that makes complete sense to him.

He kisses her.

The following week the spare room is back to being spotless, hockey has taken over her TiVo, and Jack finds himself at the pound.


End file.
